{"id":863,"date":"2008-10-31T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T04:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=863"},"modified":"2008-10-31T00:00:25","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T04:00:25","slug":"responses-to-browns-nuclear-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/responses-to-browns-nuclear-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Responses to Brown\u2019s nuclear piece"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Re: Lester Brown\u2019s \u00a0\u00a0\u201cTHE FLAWED ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR POWER\u201d<\/a> Circulated\u00a0 by\u00a0Charlie Hall to his \u201cpeak oil\u2019 list for comment.\u00a0\u00a0 Lester has been among the most farsighted\u00a0observers of the collision between man and earth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Charlie,
\nLester does his usual great job, and makes everyone\u2019s usual great error.<\/p>\n

He expertly addresses a part of the puzzle without mentioning the whole puzzle that all the alternates look as bad.<\/h3>\n

I think the lack of solar and wind development at scale is fairly obvious, and the same as the reason he points to for the lack of new nuclear power plants.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s not really economic.\u00a0\u00a0 The same has been true during the whole 40 year vigorous search for alternative fuels.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, he allows it to seem that there are good alternates when the problem is that we\u2019ve been very creatively looking for them and can\u2019t find them.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It think the simplest true way to describe the problem is as declining ROI for every system and resource as we run into multiplying complications in approaching common limits for the whole system that bounce all through the links of the system, making real growth unprofitable.\u00a0http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/issues\/ResourceNet.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks for the proceedings of ASPO Conference Barcelona 2008 \u2026 mostly looks great. [Can be found by googling ASPO Barcelona and clicking on my talk on day two \u2013CH] Your talk is good, but does not mention that \u201cpeak oil\u201d is part of the \u201cpeak everything\u201d.\u00a0 That\u2019s the same omission as Lester was making.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the diagram of the linkages is about.\u00a0\u00a0 Why a system of self interests becomes so self-defeating needs to be addressed better too.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The environmental signals of impending major change are often \u201canti-signals\u201d, like things remaining the same, for example.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Knowing which things signal change when they don\u2019t change makes what nature tells us is quite tricky, till you learn which.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeak everything\u201d is experienced as *general<\/strong>* diminishing returns for everything, so the most important signal tends to be invisible.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s experienced only as every task getting a little harder in the same way.\u00a0\u00a0 That gets hidden by our constant effort to keep changing techniques an improving our skills.<\/p>\n

We just don\u2019t see it as signaling a whole system loosing battle, though it really is.\u00a0 \u00a0If anything, we just see griping about it as a personal failing. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s a mistake, to accept constantly working a little harder on more complicated things.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0That it also means working to systemically accelerate diminishing resource availability is a mistake we should point out.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the constancy of growth itself, the illusive constant proportional increase that we built all our institutions around.\u00a0\u00a0 Human imagination is not self-limiting, but physical systems are. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cConstant proportional change\u201d is a mental constant corresponding to both exploding physical scale and complexity.<\/p>\n

It also signals approaching whole system diminishing returns that could have been seen a long way off.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The \u201cconstant stabilizing\u201d\u00a0 of investments for highest compound returns then directly necessitates approaching collapse.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0We\u2019re missing all the physical system signals\u2026 because most people are only thinking in terms of mental systems.<\/p>\n

These problems of forecasting change are part of the puzzle I\u2019ve done some of my best work on, that may the first really useful result of non-deterministic physics.\u00a0\u00a0 It think you should use them.\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks for the notes & question, hope you can use my comments\u2026<\/p>\n

pfh<\/p>\n

\n

My comment below was one of sixteen, but got a couple\u00a0very nice complements, to whit:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWow is right.\u00a0 Charlie, I can\u2019t believe what an erudite group you communicate with!\u00a0 What a grasp of the English language.\u00a0 Who is\u00a0Phil Henshaw?\u00a0 That man can write so beautifully.\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks for sharing, this was SO interesting to read.”
\nDoug<\/p>\n

“Charlie, thanks. That was valuable. BTW, the other response which most closely matches my outlook both of what is actually happening, how we must think about it and hence what we should do about the overall situation is that of Phil Henshaw. That\u2019s not only the single best summation I\u2019ve read in a long time, but also fits the knowledge of human behaviors in crisis.\u00a0\u00a0 The last time I read anything close was Dr. Kenneth F. E. Watt\u2019s THE TITANIC EFFECT: PLANNING FOR THE UNTHINKABLE.”
\nLee<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014-<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re: Lester Brown\u2019s \u00a0\u00a0\u201cTHE FLAWED ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR POWER\u201d Circulated\u00a0 by\u00a0Charlie Hall to his \u201cpeak oil\u2019 list for comment.\u00a0\u00a0 Lester has been among the most farsighted\u00a0observers of the collision between man and earth. Charlie, Lester does his usual great job, and makes everyone\u2019s usual great error. He expertly addresses a part of the puzzle without … Continue reading Responses to Brown\u2019s nuclear piece<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}